Talk:Eddie Izzard

Narnia

Okay. So an atheist who actually had a major gig denigrating God is chosen to play the most devout character in a heavily Christian story. There has to have been commentary on this, could we look for it?Not even Mr. Lister's Koromon survived intact. 09:22, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

This seem misplaced in Eddie Izzard article, and seem better in the wiki page of the movie. Mr. Wiggles 00:37 1 January 2009 (PST) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.127.115.225 (talk)

Father

The article mentions his mother's death, but does not say whether his father has since remarried or died. Does anyone know? Nietzsche 2 (talk) 23:47, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

As of his autobiographical movie "Believe", released earlier this year, his father was still alive and kicking. --84.61.113.66 (talk) 16:55, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

And there seems to have been (it is not clear if there still is) a stepmother: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-maclean/i-believe-that-eddie-izza_b_682648.html --84.61.113.66 (talk) 13:59, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Personal life

The article lacks a personal life section - there must be more to it than crossdressing. As he is a crossdresser and in LGBT categories, it should be stated that he is heterosexual. His atheism is another relevant point to add; he is in an atheist cat, but there is nothing in the article about that belief of his. He was a guest on the 30 January 2009 episode of Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, during which he stated that there is no god, as he did not intervene during the two World Wars. Nietzsche 2 (talk) 23:59, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Quote about Wikipedia I found on a userpage

I have just found a quote from Rodhullandemu's userpage, aparrently from and I was wondering what to do with it.--Launchballer (talk) 17:08, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Nationality

The infobox has him listed as Nationality: English. This is wrong as there is no such thing as English nationality. I have corrected it to British. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ajkgordon (talk • contribs) 07:59, 29 May 2007.

You should try to get consensus before making changes as controversial as that! You haven't even reached consensus on Talk:England yet. Marnanel 22:07, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Controversial?! How can it be controversial? I was correcting an error! Please explain why this correction was reverted and why anyone believes it to be controversial. (Ajkgordon 07:41, 6 June 2007 (UTC))

It's a long story. Anyway, the habit is not to use British as a nationality. Some editors of some bio articles prefer their subjects to be Scottish, Welsh etc. Afaik English as a nationality therefore comes about by default, though maybe some English editors also favour the practice. Also borrowing from the U.S. tradition if your grandmother is Japanese or Polish then that's likely to get a mention in the first line. Editors are also keen to reference Jewish heritage for example as it might not be catered for in other encyclopaedias. So anyway there are pressures, benign in themselves, to have nationality basically come down to 'ethnicity' or identity as people in the U.S. understand it. In the case of Brits this is expressed in the infobox. Actually Brits are probably the only casualty, and I agree it doesn't always make much local sense.

Anyway in the list at the bottom of the article you'll see the Category:English comedians, which itself falls under British comedians - you could add category:British comedians directly and he'll appear on that page, not just on the lower-level English page. Thus he will be rendered British hopefully to your satisfaction :) Hakluyt bean 22:55, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Hakluyt bean. Can you point me to where discussions have taken place on this rather odd habit? I'm having difficulty understanding the logic! (Ajkgordon 07:42, 7 June 2007 (UTC))

Funny, my passport declares me as British, though I was born and brought up my entire life in England, as were my parents. Do American passports describe someone's nationality as, e.g, Texan, Californian?

Then again we're not really discussing passport nationality I guess. A texan comedian would probably be described as just that... Tricky.

BTW as he describes himself as a wiki fan, could we tempt him over here and get some interactivity / from the horses mouth clarification on various things, you think? Or would the dyslexia get in the way? (Could always be through a mediator...)82.46.180.56 (talk) 00:01, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

• In the source cited in the lede, he describes himself as "British-European". I'm not sure we have a good link for that but have moved to British for now as English obviously isn't close. Colonel Warden (talk) 12:18, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I would add that people with Scottish herritage are different than those with English heritage. There is still a STRONG nationalistic pride dispite being a national government, there is a long history there William Wallace, etc... England and Scotland still play seperate football(scoccer) teams! --Tacit tatum (talk) 05:44, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

I would add that the majority of people in the UK consist of mixture of Welsh, Scottish, Irish and English genes/heritage meaning no-one is specifically a true Scot, Welsh or the like other than in country of birth. I'd say there are more people of Irish heritage in England than in Ireland but they are still labelled as British/English - ask the Gallagher brothers from Oasis, ask Wayne Rooney etc. they see themselves as Brits and not Irish. Its the British Olympic team.

England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland are all constituent countries of a larger entity that is the internationally politcally officially recognised country - i.e. the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - with the nationality being simply British. British bests describes all the inhabitants of the UK as we all share the same heritage and genes from each constituent part of it. Any time you here of someone from the UK in the international news its usually described as a British person. Its a British passport not a Welsh passport. Its the British army etc. etc.

Eddie Izzard can't be specifically called English seeing as he was born in Aden, grew up in Northern Ireland and Wales, and then England. Due to his British parents and the fact he has lived across the UK his nationality should be British and the intro to this article should state so.

On the football aspect. FIFA depises the seperate British soccer teams, they have always been against it - its one of the main reasons why the UK has never had a football team in the Olympics - they are afraid whether FIFA would use it against them to get rid of the Home Nations in favour of one united entity which they'd prefer. We only get away with it as we have the oldest international teams in the world existing before FIFA even did. Just like the ruling body of football which is a joke in terms of international football - it consists thanks to the quirkyness of time of only the four Home Nations and then FIFA which possesses only a bloc of four votes despite representing almost 200 other international football teams. Mabuska (talk) 23:38, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Born Aden, raised Northern Ireland and Wales, identifies as British-European (which I can personally relate to), so where exactly does the English categorisation come in? Changed the cats back to British: the facts speak for themselves. Rgds, --Trident13 (talk) 23:19, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Exactly, so I've also changed the intro text to reflect this. The reference attached to "English" actually says British as well. Thomas Blomberg (talk) 12:28, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Childhood

Left out is the couple of years after family moved from Aden to Northern Ireland. Eddie has said many times this time is some of his happiest childhood memories. I believe they lived in N.I. for 2-3 years before moving to Wales. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.138.196.62 (talk) 17:44, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

And we still insist he is an English comedian. --83.108.30.25 (talk) 22:33, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Influences/influenced

I think that the Influenced/influenced section on so many comedians pages is very unnecessary and rarely have a sourced citation and are from the editors opinion. I personally think that the section should be scrapped but any quotes can be cited in any career and styles sections. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.111.175.56 (talk) 22:07, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Long distance runner

It's utterly ridiculous to have him described as long disance runner as a vocation. He's done a celebrity event - he'd not a professional runner. This should be deleted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.192.141.208 (talk) 23:23, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree, I also move for this to be deleted and will do so in a few days if there are no objections Otocan (talk) 23:02, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Done. Otocan (talk) 20:41, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Someone has hurt feelings?

So, there is a paragraph in this article which rankles me:

"Although much of his humour deals with sensitive issues, with special emphasis on religion, it has generally not been intended as mean-spirited or rude. Izzard, however, took a different tone in 2008's "Stripped" tour. Professing that he had learned he was an atheist, he explains that he doesn't like the word "worship" because he doesn't see why anyone would want to worship someone who had "fucked the whole thing up from the beginning." The show's theme was an apologetic, humorous presentation on why one may feel that there is no God."

...i'm not sure exactly what is "mean-spirited" or "rude" about Izzard's statement. This seems wholly in keeping with his usual arch religious meanderings. My inclination was to simply delete everything following the first sentence of the paragraph, because it seems oddly personal in tone. Is this just me? It also seems like his special emphasis (if there indeed is one) would be on history in general, not necessarily religion. Not sure if anyone else gives a flying jar of jam about any of this, but it's been bugging me. Most of his fans are already familiar with his religious views, and i'm not sure that informing any non-fans who might read this page of his supposed "mean-spirited"ness is helpful or informative in any way.

Thanks, 71.154.215.65 (talk) 07:55, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

It would have been mean spirited if I actually knew what he was saying. --83.108.28.130 (talk) 01:04, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Live from Wembley

Some one needs to add Live from Wembley on the tour list (I don't know how or I would).

It is basicly just a diffrent recording of his Sexie tour, but it can be baught on iTunes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.100.136.48 (talk) 03:55, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Eddie Izzard podcast

there is a pod cast (free) of him on itunes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.100.136.48 (talk) 01:13, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Eddie Izzard running, or walking? Individual marathon times, please...

The amount of walking involved in these so-called marathons seems to be something of a grey area. Where can we find a list of your individual marathon times, Eddie, so we can guage how much actual walking (as opposed to running) was involved in your "marathons"? No disrespect, but a marathon is about running. 213.48.46.141 (talk) 14:07, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

• I'd like to see you try to run OR walk 43 marathon lengths in 51 days with only five weeks of training and in the pursuit of raising money for charity. "No disrespect"? Yeah right. Oh, and you might actually want to watch the "Eddie Iz Running" (or "Eddie Izzard - Marathon Man") specials before you run your mouth off. Which, BTW, would indicate all the times, including the time for the 43rd marathon, which was 5 hours and 30 seconds including the 20 minutes he spent waiting for the film crew to find him. Speaking of, I'd like for someone who's in the know here at Wikipedia to clarify whether a TV special would be a good source for an article and if so, how to cite it as a reference. The 3rd and final one of the specials reported the final time.

68.91.89.17 (talk) 15:45, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

• • [Reply to the above from the OP] Most fit people could achieve it if what we're really talking about is 43 sponsored walks rather than a continuous bout of actual running each day. My question was, what were the times taken to travel the 26.2 miles each day. (I saw 10 hours a day of travelling mentioned on another site - that isn't even walking pace, it's barely snail's pace). I did watch the 4-part series on BBC3 before I "ran my mouth off" in fact, and it doesn't say what most of the individual daily times were, in fact. Eddie Izzard is shown mostly running rather than walking on TV, but that can't be right if he took 10 hours a day to cover the distance: the BBC editing must have left the jogging in, and conveniently cut most of the walking (the camera does lie, folks!). If Mr Izzard actually walked huge amounts of the distance covered, rather than running most of the way, then he shouldn't be claiming to have "run 43 marathons". Running a marathon involves running a marathon, not walking a huge proportion of it each day. What he did was barely faster than 43 sponsored walks by the look of things. Mr Izzard, please publish your daily times, from the start line to the finish line, for each day, so we can see for ourselves how fast or slow these so-called "marathons" were.

213.48.46.141 (talk) 15:28, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

• It is difficult to define how long each marathon took - as Eddie stopped often to visit Sport Relief projects and stop off at locations such as the house where he lived as a child and the top of Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh - but all of the times were between about 5 and 11 hours - and when he wasn't stopping to visit some place he was always running between locations, as is made very clear in the four part documentary about his run. He didn't necessarily run non-stop for 26 miles each day, but that doesn't mean it isn't an incredible achievement. Actually, the sports-scientists and doctors on the show said Eddie's stop-start style made the marathons even more difficult. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.146.54.234 (talk) 13:46, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Nationality

The article states "British" with 3 references. The first doesn't mention Izzard at all. The second refers to him as British but then quotes him saying "I'm English". The third quotes him describing himself as "English" and "English European" multiple times. Would change it and remove the first reference but don't want to screw up the rest of the references. Stutley (talk) 20:33, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

He's described as British comedian in numerous sources and he describes himself as British European in an interview by Bono too, which is oddly one of the references used after "English comedian". However, he also describes himself as "English comedian" in several sources too, which -as you already mentioned- are not cited here. After checking the references of our very own article here: English people#Relationship to Britishness and since he rephrased the same answer in here from the Bono interview by saying "I'm an English European", I think English comedian is the correct description (I see it is already changed from "British comedian" inside the article) and you're right, we need to cite it with proper references. Nimuaq (talk) 10:58, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Don't have a problem with him being called British but...as he self-describes himself as English we should use that. However, people claiming he can't be English because he was born in Aden and then raised for the very early years of his life in Northern Ireland/Wales is just utter piffle, POV and unacceptable. Common sense must be employed here. --Τασουλα (talk) 19:20, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Future projects

Information under this heading relates now not to future projects, but to completed projects and should thus be removed from this section. BBMSteve (talk) 10:40, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Improving the article

I'm very surprised to see this article in its current form. I guess the recent documentary Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story added a lot of information that are not referenced properly. The article even claims "his first solo appearance at the Edinburgh Festival in 1987" while it should be Banana Cabaret, as can be seen on the sources:[1], [2] and [3] (yes, they report different years, but they agree on Banana Cabaret). I started to add references to the article (starting from the Early life section which I'll continue to seek good references), which is not even slightly challenging to find. Even the reference from eddieizzard.com for "A year after his birth, the family moved to Bangor in Northern Ireland" is unnecessary while there are numerous articles about him on reliable sources.

Let us check the references and cite the information properly to at least remove the {{More_footnotes}} tags on the article, which is well deserved at the moment. Maybe the content on the article can be edited to have a better style after all the information is cited properly. This might help the editors to check for references for the claims on the article:

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL.

Is there anyone care to help to this future good article nominee? Nimuaq (talk) 17:10, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Poorly added content from Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story

Now I can say it is really heavily bombarded with the information from Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story. Take this line: "Izzard began to toy with comedy at the University of Sheffield with partner and a student friend Rob Ballard." Search for "Eddie Izzard" together with "Rob Ballard" and remove a random line from the current Wikipedia article: it leaves you with 62 results, nearly all of which are related toBelieve: The Eddie Izzard Story.

I could (at last) find an article from 99' to cite the information. I already stated at the above section that the "article even claims "his first solo appearance at the Edinburgh Festival in 1987" while it should be Banana Cabaret, as can be seen on the sources:[1], [2] and [3] (yes, they report different years, but they agree on Banana Cabaret)." I think we might not find enough sources for every line that is poorly added to the article from that documentary and I fear we might have to remove them according to the BLP policies. Nimuaq (talk) 22:03, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

"Live At Madison Square Garden"

Latest stand up video, released 2011. It's a flip version of Stripped, like "Live from Wembly" which is also mysteriously absent from this article. Why not add them to the discography? John Holly (talk) 18:22, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

There is such thing as being in character

How moronic you have to be to cite comedy acts as facts? In the show it's comedy, not fact. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.19.140.222 (talk) 12:08, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to assume that you're talking about how Dress to Kill (which is indeed a comedy act ) is cited. This is because there is a direct quote from that particular act. Please do a little research before you make accusations. TheNewKarl (talk) 10:38, 5 July 2012 (UTC)